Your vote in November will be an orgy of tax increases that would make even the Kama Sutra blush.

In the main section, we see that state lawmakers have loosened old restrictions that prevented local governments from taking on too much debt. California’s 1879 Constitution states: “No county, city, town, county, board of education, or school district shall, without the consent of two-thirds of the eligible voters, incur any debt or obligation in any manner or for any purpose…”

How oppressive and Victorian! Today’s legislature has rigged the vote so that new debt can be passed with only 55% support instead of two-thirds of the vote. Their handiwork is Proposition 5 on the statewide ballot in November.

Technically, Prop. 5 does not apply to all debt for everything, but only to debt for infrastructure, which means everything, and for publicly funded housing projects and programs.

This has drawn cries of joy from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the nine-county Bay Area, which is behind the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority’s proposal for a $20 billion housing bond. Regional Measure 4 would raise property taxes in the nine counties and the money would be spread like butter. The measure would struggle to get the 66.7% approval of voters it currently requires. But if Prop. 5 passes in November, Regional Measure 4 will be declared approved if it receives just 55% of the vote.

If you’re registered to vote in California, your ballot will arrive in the mail the first week of October. Don’t be shy, even if you’re a newbie to this orgy business. Rip open the envelope and dive right into local action. You might even hear cries of pleasure emanating from the “infrastructure” and “affordable housing” bonds that were added to the ballot late, when no one was reading the August government meeting agendas.

The ballot will probably tell you how much each of these measures will cost you. Usually, this is stated as a few cents per $100 of your home’s assessed value, or tens of dollars per $100,000 of value. Your local government is betting that nobody likes doing the math at an orgy. But if you do the math, you’ll see that many of these bonds will increase property taxes on an average-priced home by hundreds of dollars a year. Multiply your annual tax increase by 30 years to see how much the bonds will cost you over time.

Then call your neighbors and tell them not to throw away their ballots, because voting against Proposition 5 and sending them back immediately is the best thing you can do to stop the tax increases. It’s easier than buying a lottery ticket, and the odds of winning are much better.

Another category of bonds, school bonds, already pass with 55% approval, up from two-thirds. That’s the result of an amendment to the state constitution passed 24 years ago by voters who believed school districts could more easily borrow money to do things like remove asbestos and lead from school buildings. Look at your ballot, and you’ll likely find a new school bond that wants to borrow hundreds of millions or even billions more, also to remove asbestos and lead from school buildings. It’s become like a fetish.

The latest participant in the tax spree is the Los Angeles Unified School District, which just introduced a $9 billion bond and put it on the ballot within days. The tax increase that would fund the bond was well hidden in a 50-page PDF of documents attached to the school board meeting agenda, which stated: “Based on current estimates, the $9 billion proposal is expected to impose a tax of approximately 2.504 cents per $100 of assessed value…”

I’ll do the math for you. The median price of a home in the city of Los Angeles was $1,098,000 in June 2024. On that value, the LAUSD tax increase would be $274.94 in the first year and each year it would be adjusted upward with inflation as the assessed value of the home increases. That increase is capped at 2% annually by Proposition 13, which, not coincidentally, is under serious attack by politicians, advocacy groups and the courts.

In fact, there is another arena at this orgy, hidden away to the side, as if the participants knew it might not be entirely legal. This is where the naked “Upland Tax” fraud can be found.

The nickname comes from a 2017 state Supreme Court decision in a case called California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland. The court pointed out that if a tax increase is put to the vote by a “citizen initiative” without actually voting on it, the state constitution may not apply. Rather than a two-thirds majority, a simple majority – 50% plus one – might suffice.